Thread: Returning player looking for Leveling Guides

Dear all,

I quit LOTRO a few months/weeks before it went F2P but I recently "re-activated" my Account and decided that rather than leveling my Minstrel (lvl 64) I would like to re-roll on one of the new servers.

Now obviously I had completed a lot of the story up until lvl 64 on my minstrel, and obviously a lot has changed in the game, so I was wondering if anyone could point me to a sort of up to date leveling guide, as I would prefer to get back to Mirkwood (that's where I stopped playing) asap on this new character and then continue all the stories from there again in full.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

Not sure what you mean by "leveling guide" - you follow the quest chains, make sure you do all the "Prologue" and "Chapter X/Book Y" quests, and keep moving forward.

If you mean a guide as to what zones are approp for what levels, I'd check the wiki: http://lotro-wiki.com/index.php/Ques...or_Every_Level

You probably already know the site but still a good resource: http://lotro.mmorsel.com/2010/03/lot...ng-basics.html

As for the changes, yes there have been a few. Check out the Developer Diaries, especially the last ones on Fornost and Moria.

Thanks for the replies. What I am looking for is something similar to the Zygor Guides for WoW. I do not need an ingame add-on with waypointers etc. but what makes the Zygor guides so nice is that they will optimize the questing so you do not run around picking up quests that will lead you to the end of the world with little reward, making you waste a lot of time...

Oh yeah. I remember those quests. Completely useless boat/zeppelin rides from continent to continent, running through areas 5 to 10 levels higher than yourself, without a known flight route, in the middle of a known gank zone, just to hand off a bottle of booze for 15 silver and brief blip of XP.

Yeah. This game doesn't have those. Or, more precisely, it's for an actual reason and for decent on-level rewards. (Although I still don't understand why Dwarves and Hobbits can't go to Rivendell for 2.1.8 like the Elves and Men instead of hauling all the way over to Thorin's Hall. That's the one that bugs me most.) You'll run into plenty of the breadcrumb quests that appear to be otherwise useless, but breadcrumbs are part and parcel of the way MMOs operate these days.

So really, there's no need for a guide like that in this game. Turbine isn't like Blizzard, after all. Turbine actually knows how to keep things interesting for the sake of being interesting rather than just throwing spaghetti against the ceiling fan to find out where it sticks.

Whilst I understand what you mean, the key thing for me is that I already levelled one character to 64 and did pretty much all the quests on him, for my alt I was looking for a slightly faster, optimized way.

Oh. Optimum. That's simple. Your starting zone to West Bree. Quest at Adso's Camp and Buckland and into the Forest until Level 20. Follow the Breadcrumbs into Lone Lands and keep going through until about 29 or 30, skipping Harloeg and most of the pre-Garth Agarwen quests. Then to Evendim, relax in Oatbarton and help the Hobbits for two levels, then get to work on Dwaling. Continue through the area until around level 39 or 40. Then catch up on your Epics and a few skirmishes until 45, then get to work on Eregion and your Legendaries. Moria at 49. Lothlorien at 56. Edenwaith at 60. Isengard at 65. And, by then, Rohan will be out for all your Level 75 needs.

That was helpful, that brief and summarized leveling guide. I'm fairly new all-around, and that was good to read. Thanks!

Skirmish once you unlock those! The monster kills and reward experience pushes you thru the mid levels much faster than quests alone.

Drop quests when they turn green unless they reward you with an item you need. Try to keep with orange and white quests.

If you have it, use extra xp per kill pocket item.

If you have it, destiny or store bought "rested xp" is great.

Avoid the one quest to go 100 miles through 1000 mobs to get 1 thing done. Try to focus on doing 3 quests at once as much as you can. Most quest hubs, you have at the same time "kill the thing in this area", "pick up something off the ground in this area", and "loot something off the mobs you had to kill anyway in this area" quests all happening at once. Its hard to generalize but the leveling guides may have the details for it --- but the idea is to do 3+ things at once, all the time, and discard one at a time type quests. So for example, say you start in the shire --- the postman quests to deliver mail are a waste of time (for experience, just talking experience points) as they prevent you from doing anything else other than travel. Much better is to, all at the same time, save a hobbit from bears, kill X bears for pelts, save hobbits from bears & bees, and more all within a few seconds travel of each other. If you happen to work in a mail delivery as you go from where you were to the next quest hub, that works great, but just grabbing them at random and then walking across the shire and back (to do the other quests where you started from) is what slows leveling way down, see?

If you focus you can get somewhere between 30 and 40 in a couple of days, then there is a big slow period (again, skirmish through this helps a lot) to get to 50. 50-75 is pretty fast and steady; 60-65 is about 1 day in mirkwood, 65-75 is less than a week in isengard. So the biggest thing to focus on is the 40-60 slowdown. If you can do anything to make those mid levels efficient, the rest is a breeze. Moria can be done fast but you sort of need to know the areas to manage it. It can also be very, very slow.

Originally Posted by forusrname

Drop quests when they turn green unless they reward you with an item you need.

But only do that after you've completed enough quests in the region to finish the questing deeds. (Well, I guess you can afford to drop some out-leveled ones if there are plenty of on or above level quests left for finishing those deeds, but early on, there are areas where you're likely to out-level the majority of available quests by the time you complete the advanced questing deed.)

Oh, and in determining whether the reward is an item you need or not, reputation rewards are good. It's quicker and easier to build up reputation by questing than by farming mobs to get rep items that drop from them (which typically give less rep than the questing ones anyway).

Originally Posted by Niwashi

But only do that after you've completed enough quests in the region to finish the questing deeds. (Well, I guess you can afford to drop some out-leveled ones if there are plenty of on or above level quests left for finishing those deeds, but early on, there are areas where you're likely to out-level the majority of available quests by the time you complete the advanced questing deed.)

Oh, and in determining whether the reward is an item you need or not, reputation rewards are good. It's quicker and easier to build up reputation by questing than by farming mobs to get rep items that drop from them (which typically give less rep than the questing ones anyway).

My comments were purely for experience and rapid leveling up. Deeds, rep, getting the best gear, crafting, and more are all important parts of the game that I ignored on purpose. While I personally prefer to work on these aspects of a character as I go, that is an aside to getting to max level as fast as possible (though a few virtues will really help, and good gear also helps). Its counter intuitive perhaps but spending 1/2 an hour to get solid gear that will cover the next 10 levels allows faster leveling than trying to beat it out off drops and quest rewards that are outdated and of poor quality....

However TASKS are important and you SHOULD tap out your daily task limit every day, its free XP and rep, for doing nothing more than clicking to accept and clicking to turn in --- you should already have tons of the items from doing quests in the area all day.

Good points all around, just clarifying that my method is totally for max xp and rapid leveling which leads to a poorly developed character who, at max level, has a long "to do" list of catching up...